The Actor and the Housewife (32 page)

Melissa nodded. “That’s all great. But I didn’t hear how
you
were.”

“I said ‘good.’ ”

Melissa nodded again, chewing her stuffed grape leaves very slowly, her eyes suspicious.

With the kids on the mend, the intimate family dinners fighting invisible monsters petered out, so Becky switched tactics and made sure the house was full of noise and energy. Almost every night for dinner, someone was there—the grandparents, one of her brother’s families, Uncle Ryan. She wanted surrogate fathers in the house. She wanted laughter and light.

She worked tirelessly to keep that house running as if all was well, but there were things Mike had always taken care of that she just forgot. Like the garbage. A couple of weeks went by, and she noticed the cans around the house overflowing (mostly with used tissue), so she did manage to dump them in the garbage can outside. Garbage day was Monday. Each Tuesday the outside cans were empty again. She never dragged them from the driveway to the curb. She never even realized she was supposed to. But each Tuesday, they were empty and waiting for more tissue trash.

On a cold, bright morning after a night completely devoid of sleep, she was lying on her bedroom floor trying to count her eyelashes when she heard a sound she couldn’t name—a bumpy, rolling sound, like someone dragging something across gravel. She peered through the blinds. It was her neighbor Charles, dragging her garbage cans out to the curb, as he must have been doing ever since Mike’s illness.

Becky had to choke down her cereal that morning, her throat was stiff with unshed tears.

In general, her ward members mobilized like an army of angels. People didn’t just ask that lame question “Is there something I can do? Just call if you need anything.” They didn’t ask—they did. Garbage cans for starters, but also shoveling walks each snowfall that winter, dinners kept coming for a month, and then after that once a month two men assigned by the bishop arrived at her front door with a toolbox and said, “If we wouldn’t be a bother, Sister Jack, we’d have a blast puttering around your house and seeing what we can patch up.” Other single women began to include her in their girls’ night out on Fridays; other fathers in the ward began taking her boys ice fishing or snowshoeing.

But there were the sour moments too.

Becky told Melissa over baba ghanoush, “Yesterday at church, a lady took me aside with the express purpose to tell me, ‘Don’t feel bad. When God closes a door, he opens a window.’ ”

Melissa choked on some pita bread.

“I kid you not. What the heck does that mean anyway? That I’m supposed to climb out a window now? Or is the window just to air out the house, which is stinking to high heaven, given the fact that the door has been shut indefinitely and NO ONE CAN GET OUT?!”

“Okay,” Melissa said, fishing scrap paper and a pen from her purse, “I want name and address. Tonight I’m going to board up her doors.”

To be fair, Becky wouldn’t have been comforted by any idiom that fits onto refrigerator magnets. If you want to see Becky seethe, just suggest that she take the lemons life has given her and make some lemonade.

A nd there was Joann, a well-meaning neighbor.

“I’m sorry about your husband.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

“You know, my husband left me when I was thirty-three and had four small children. Just be grateful that didn’t happen.”

Becky stared. Only with superhuman restraint did she keep from asking, “You’re saying I should be
grateful
my husband died?”

“Experts say that divorce is a harder trial to bear than the death of a spouse.” The woman nodded to herself. “Hard stuff. Hard times. Yep, hard, hard times. Well, sorry!”

The worst thing about this exchange? Becky couldn’t call Mike to tell him about it. The ache of that reality was briefly too much to bear, so she e-mailed Felix, describing the exchange.

He responded:

I couldn’t agree more. This Joann shows some sense, though I
suspect she is a demon dressed in human skin. I’d like to shave
her head next time I’m in town, though I know you won’t let me, so
perhaps we could schedule one evening to park near her house and
stare at it menacingly.

The e-mail helped some, imagining Joann as a demon in human skin was distracting at the very least, but Becky still felt overturned by the comment. She reasoned that it didn’t matter whether or not that woman’s divorce had been harder than Becky’s loss—both were hard, and trying to weigh one against the other invalidated Becky’s pain. She knew that, in a tight, angry, buzzing sort of way. But she got to wondering: Would it have been worse if Mike had chosen to leave her rather than been forced out of life by that nasty, cell-sucking disease? Definitely not, because the kids would still have their father, no matter how much being betrayed and cast off would have stung Becky. But what if he’d been a lousy father? What if he hadn’t loved the kids, or been abusive, or had a thousand-dollar-a-day cocaine habit?

Becky passed much of the evening imagining scenarios that would have been worse than death. It didn’t help any more than the swearing.

And she woke up the next morning feeling the same as always, as if it were the antithesis of Christmas. The morning was tacky with hopelessness, nothing to look forward to, and no marvelous anticipation would ever exist again. Because Mike was gone.

Months pulled by, and while the kids got stronger, Becky, so slowly she barely noticed, was plunging deeper and deeper. Mike’s side of the closet was full. She didn’t change the sheets on the bed, hoping to retain his smell. She still turned to him to say something funny and had to rediscover again that he wasn’t there. She was reminded of amputee victims reporting that they still felt sensation in the missing limb. She still felt Mike beside her. Some days it was an empty comfort. Some days it made her fl at-out angry. Once, she punched a wall. She bruised her knuckles and didn’t even leave a dent. How irritating is that?

She was a pillar of salt. If she could just keep standing, pretending to be the same solid mother, everything would be fine. No one would know her truth.

The real question was, that first year, why didn’t she just break? Later she reasoned that she must have been walking on the prayers of others, she must have been surrounded by angels. She certainly wasn’t trying to survive on her own. No, she’d get through each day, each moment, for the kids, but really, she’d crossed her spiritual fingers and hoped to self-destruct.

She moved through her year of grace like an ant through a drop of honey, until those powers of perseverance pulled back and nudged her to stand on her own. It was on the one-year anniversary of Mike’s death. There she was, left to her own strength, and of course, she collapsed.

It hit her like a piano falling ten stories. The best part of Becky, the most brilliant and confident part, was the mother part—and what kind of a mother can’t keep her children’s father alive? She felt the cracking as she made Sam his peanut butter and sliced grape sandwich.

“You okay, Mom?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” She didn’t think she could use real words.

She clung to her fraying ends as she hunted down Hyrum’s shoes before he missed the bus.

“Why’re you being weird?”

“Mm,” she said.

The moment the front door clicked closed and Becky was left alone, she lay facedown in the family room and imploded. She cried, letting eyes and nose run into the carpet fibers, too defeated to hunt a tissue, too broken to lift her hands.

Pretty much everything all her life had come easily—friends, school, pregnancy, birth, all the crooks and crannies of motherhood, house keeping, even selling two screenplays and acting in a movie, things mundane and things extraordinary. She’d never really been challenged.

Until now. She didn’t know how to go on, didn’t know how to be Becky anymore.

How was a woman who’d been sawed in half expected to keep standing? How could she survive with half of her gone? Mike was yang to her yin in every aspect of her life—the kids, the house, her thoughts, her spirituality, her very being. There was no space within her that he didn’t share.

Except that Felix part of her. Except her liver.

The phone rang.

The cordless was lying on the carpet a couple of feet away. She didn’t want to answer it. But what if it was one of the kids? What if they needed her?

She reached, clicked the Talk button, rolled it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Becky. Are you all right?” It was Felix. They’d spoken a few times over the past year, but she’d mostly avoided him. Probably because he was a comfort, and she didn’t deserve comfort.

“Sure,” Becky said. All she said was “sure.”

He must have understood everything in that word. He was in Chicago. He said, “I’m coming.”

In which Felix wears tourist shorts

“Honey . . .” Becky had forgotten Fiona was coming home from a summer study in California that day. She tried to remember if Fiona had asked her for a ride from the airport—no, a friend was going to pick her up. That was a relief, at least.

“Let me get you a snack,” Becky said, hauling herself up to a sitting position. “I’m fine. I’m just—don’t worry. I’m fine. We have some apples and cheese, and there’s some banana bread . . .”

“Mom,” Fiona said with such tenderness it made Becky’s eyes sting.

Fiona didn’t ask what was wrong, didn’t panic to see her indestructible mother in a heap on the floor. She just helped her stand, walked her to her bed, and tucked her in.

Fiona melted cheese on crackers and made fruit and yogurt smoothies. She hauled the small family room television set into the bedroom and lay beside Becky, watching soap operas with the sound muted, making up her own dialogue to try to get her mother laughing.

“ ‘And that is why, I say, that is why, I intend to turn myself into a dog.’ ‘If you think I’ll rub your ears, then you have another thing coming.’ ‘Oh no? Then I will glare at you. You see me here, glaring at you? I am the master of the glare. I have a Ph.D. in glare.’ ‘Well, I can glare too! Watch me glaring. Tremble at my glaring.’ ”

Becky wanted to laugh, but mostly she stared at Fiona, pondering with a sublime ache how beautiful her daughter was, how kind and precious and clever. With the fl oodgate so recently opened, Becky had little control and that set her off again.

“Sorry,” Becky said through sobs.

Fiona fetched a box of tissues and lay on her side, looking at her mother matter-of-factly. “I’ve heard it said that it helps to put words on feelings. What’s it feel like, Mom?”

“A whole zoo on my chest.” She was breathless with sobbing. “Noah’s ark, boat and all.”

“First step, we drown them.” And Fiona drew her mother a hot bath.

Around noon Fiona made a couple of calls in the kitchen, then marched back into her mother’s room and commenced packing a suitcase.

“Honey, what’s—”

“Everything’s taken care of.”

“But I can’t go anywhere. It’s the year anniversary. We should be together as a family and—”

“They’re fine. Grandma and Grandpa will keep them for a week.”

“Sweetie, I—”

Fiona shushed her, stuck her in the car, and drove her to the Salt Lake Airport. Felix was there, wearing a bright blue sweater that looked wonderfully soft. Becky hadn’t seen him since the funeral. She barely had time to notice how blue his eyes looked before his arms were around her. She tucked her head against his chest, softening into new sobs. The sweater really was delightfully soft. Fiona kissed her good-bye and before Becky fully realized what was happening, she was flying first-class to Mazatlán.

“I’ll pay you back my half,” she squeaked.

Felix laughed. He was going to win this one.

“It was about time you left the country,” he said. “You don’t know how your domestic-bound life has haunted me. Without a passport, this was the most exotic location I could take you. Well, there was Puerto Rico, but they didn’t have available first-class seats.”

“We could’ve flown coach.”

That made Felix laugh.

They settled back to watch the in-flight movie. Unbelievably, it was a clever if overwrought thriller called
Run Cannibal Run!
starring one Felix Callahan. This set Becky into a fit of giggles. The laughing felt strange in her throat, raw and thick, scratching her as it came out. She wondered when the last time was that she’d had a genuine laugh. She wondered if laughing was a betrayal to Mike. She was certain she didn’t deserve it. But it was hard not to relax around Felix; it was hard not to fall into the old Becky, the Becky who laughed, the Becky who didn’t ache everywhere. He pulled that Becky out of her as easily as he’d waltzed her on the dance floor.

“I never saw this one,” Felix said. “The premiere conflicted with Mike’s funeral. Bless his heart, he saved me that day from the red carpet torture.”

“Yes, in those last moments, your premiere was foremost in his mind.”

“See what I mean? A gentleman’s gentleman.”

They wore the ear jacks in only one ear so they could whisper to each other through the movie. There were some tense moments, some clever lines, but despite Felix’s brilliant character part, the clumsy post-production meddling of a dozen separate producers had put a crimp in the overall appeal.

“See how handsome you look in gray,” she’d say. “Ooh, you’re so
serious
there!”

Felix groaned a lot. The people across the aisle kept staring.

It became easier and easier to fall into a laugh with Felix, in part because he hadn’t been around during Mike’s illness and the year after, her relationship with him untainted by the crippling gloom. Suddenly, she was four years younger sitting beside Felix on the movie set and giggling into her script to keep quiet. Besides the giggle, Becky discovered other forgotten friends popping up—a carefree tone of voice, a relaxed right shoulder, a twitching smile in the corner of her mouth. It felt good, like pressing heat on a strained muscle. But she was also afraid. Being with Felix was keeping that hulking slobbering beast of mourning at bay—temporarily. Soon her reprieve would be over, and she’d fall back into that horror story again. Hitting bottom was sure to hurt so much more than if she’d never crawled up.

“No, no, we should have two rooms,” Felix said.

“Oh for goodness sake, yes, two rooms. Felix snores like an elephant. Or so his ex-wife assured me. Though I was never clear on how she’d come to hear elephants snoring . . .”

“But with connecting doors.”

“Oh yes, connecting doors. I don’t want to have to go into a hallway to see him. But with locks on the doors. I can’t have him barging in while I’m dressing.”

“It’s for my protection, really. She wears the most ridiculous smalls.”

“You wish you’ve seen my ‘smalls.’ ”

The lady stared. “Um, I’ve only been working here for a couple of weeks and I have no idea how to respond to that. Would you please pretend that I replied appropriately? Great. Here are your room keys.”

Becky thanked her and felt certain that if they’d been neighbors, she and the check-in lady would’ve been friends. The thought tingled inside her that this world was full of wonderful people.

And then she felt it again like a slap—
but Mike is gone
.

Her breath caught and she stopped walking. Felix took her arm.

“Hey, hey there, are you all right?”

Her chin trembled. As much as she tried to ignore the thought, it was there, the elephant in the room. The huge, attention-hungry, snoring elephant—Mike is gone, Mike is gone . . .

“I can’t have this. I can’t have you unhappy.” Felix picked her up under her knees and carried her to the elevator as if across the threshold of a honeymoon suite.

She squirmed. “You can put me down. Never mind, I’m fine. It was just momentary panic.”

He hefted her as if testing her weight. “Either you weigh near nothing or I’m terribly strong. I think it’s the latter. Definitely the latter. I had no idea I was in such excellent shape.” He caught his face reflected in the elevator’s polished chrome. “And so indescribably handsome. You are one lucky lady.”

They went into their separate rooms and Becky might’ve been inclined to sit on her balcony and feel melancholy, but Felix had unlocked his side of the connecting door and was already rapping.

“Hallo?” he said in falsetto. “House keeping. I bring you fresh towels and chocolates. And an indescribably handsome man to do your bidding.”

She opened up. He was wearing a towel over his head, giving him the look of an awkward Madonna sans child.

“Let’s do dinner followed by a pedicure,” he said. “Isn’t that what ladies like to do to indulge? Come on, I’ll let them paint my toenails whichever color you choose. It’ll be fab-u-lous!”

“I’m not going to let you pay for everything, you know,” Becky said.

Felix removed the towel. “You have no choice, darling. Fiona and I conspired on every detail, including the surreptitious removal of all your credit cards.”

Becky rushed to her luggage and checked her wallet. Empty slots stared back. She watched it, waiting for the cards to reappear, wondering if she should insist or declare something or be willful and stubborn. She sighed defeat.

“In that case, for dinner I want filet mignon.”

“I love it when you’re bloodthirsty.”

The mornings they communed by the water, finding hammocks or beach chairs, reading paperbacks or just talking in that leisurely, oceanside way, the push of water and wind cleaning all worry and hurry out of them. Nothing seemed really important or devastatingly sad on the beach. The rhythm of water rushing and slapping the sand trumped the rhythm of days and years, and all of time seemed enfolded into the present moment.

After a rest and shower, they would meet up again for lunch. Felix emerged from his room, the tip of his nose bright red.

“You got Rudolphed,” Becky said with a laugh.

“Explain.”

She pointed to her nose. “The sun kissed you here, my friend. You must have been a good boy.”

He nodded slowly. “Rudolph. I am often compared favorably to the noble caribou. No, of course you were referring to Valentino. He could learn a few tricks from yours truly.”

Through the hot afternoon, they sat on the floor of Felix’s room and played whatever games the hotel concierge could supply—Sorry, gin rummy, Candy Land. Their favorite was a board game called Zombies Attack!, which they played for hours on end, ordering room service and partaking of it on the rug so as not to interrupt their last stand against the tiny plastic zombies plaguing the board.

“I’ll show you, you brain-sucking deadhead,” Felix shouted. “Eat my shotgun!”

They went shopping at the faux-markets and challenged each other to look the most like a tourist. Becky did well with a Hawaiian shirt, sarong, huge hat with fake mums, and grass purse. But all it took was seeing Felix in some well-chosen Bermuda shorts pulled up over his waist for her to gracefully concede the contest. They wore the outfits whenever they went out, especially to nice dinners. No one asked Felix for an autograph.

Becky phoned home every day. Fiona was fine. Polly and the boys were fine. Grandma and Grandpa were fine. In fact, they all seemed to be enjoying the holiday. Her mother said, “Don’t rush home!”

In the absence of anything to worry about, Becky teetered between panicking at the hostile entropy of the world and actually relaxing. If alone, who knows what madness might have consumed her. But Felix was there, wearing Bermuda shorts pulled high.

On their last evening, they were standing on the hotel balcony and watching the ocean. There was something about large bodies of water that tugged everything out of Becky’s soul and left her clean and float-ing. So she floated, watching the waves curl far below, letting her gaze try to spot the point on the horizon where the ocean disappeared. At the moment, she couldn’t feel any invisible animals gnawing on her flesh—not so much as an unease mouse nibbling her toenails.

She looked at Felix. He was staring at the ocean too. It looked like a movie shot, the light outlining his face so perfectly it seemed artificial, the breeze playing in his hair, his expression wonderfully conveying the peace of the moment. He turned, saw her looking, and smiled the sweetest smile, a smile for a best friend.

It wasn’t a movie.

She started to cry. She didn’t even know why. Felix put his arms around her, pulling her into his chest. She cried on his flowered tourist shirt. He rubbed her back. He kissed her hair. There was a loosening in her heart, an unclenching. They didn’t say anything for a long time.

When they finally let go, night had begun to recline over the ocean and the breeze was wet. She shivered. She hadn’t been cold inside his arms. He ducked into his room and came back with a sweater, draping it over her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she said.

But when he looked at her, there was something different in his eyes. She didn’t think about what it was then. She only knew that it made her stomach squeeze as if she were about to go on a roller coaster and was shying in anticipation.

They decided to go to dinner and chose a noisy, seaside jazz club that served huge fish sizzling on wooden boards. The music, the people, the fish sizzle made it almost impossible to talk. Which seemed to be what both of them wanted that night. She leaned against him in the booth to watch the musicians, her body positioned so that she couldn’t see Felix’s face. His arm draped around her shoulder.

She said a prayer. Thank you, Father, for this man. And help me know what to do.

She realized that the new look in Felix’s eyes was hope.